Posts Tagged comedy

4 results.

Retro: The Big Deal

Feb19
by Jay on February 19, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Posted In: reviews

The Big Deal

aka Tou Shen Gu Zu

Lu Chin-Ku, 1992

If you know your Hong Kong action cinema, and especially if you’re of a similar age to geeks like me, you’ll probably remember the craze for “Girls With Guns” action in the ’80s to mid-’90s, featuring strong female leads kicking and blasting their way through modern settings in everything from breezy affirmative actioners to full-on Cat III sleazefests. Today’s review features some of the standout stars of that genre in a breathtakingly silly send-up of their typical day jobs. It’s daft, it’s relentless and it’s a bit of a bugger to get a hold of, it’s Lu Chin-Ku’s The Big Deal.

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Stunt Dummy no jutsu!

The plot, such as it is, gives us Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima as a pair of thieves on the run from supercops Lethal Weapon (The Killer‘s Tommy Wong Kwong-Leung) and Super Cannon (fellow action starlet Sibelle Hu, who starred alongside most of the girls here in the incredible Angel Terminators 2). This game of cat-and-mouse continues until they stumble across the real villains of the piece (including the fantastic Yuen Wah of Kung Fu Hustle fame and Buffy’s future stunt double Sophia Crawford) and decide to team up to take them down.

That’s all largely irrelevant though, as the setup’s little more than the flimsiest excuse to dash through a breakneck series of terrible gags, genuinely impressive kung-fu slapstick and levels of mugging so egregious it seems at times like they’re trying to bend their own faces off. It’s wilfully daft in a way that’s easily infectious if you’re not above that sort of thing, and all the better for it.

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Lethal Weapon and Super Cannon, hard at it.

Despite, or perhaps because of the sheer blunt force silliness of it all, it somehow works a lot better than it should. There are some fun visual gags, but the majority of the jokes run from flat to incredibly obvious, carrying itself along with a quickfire pace supported by the actresses’ natural charm and obvious delight in subverting their more popular personae. No matter how insane the situation, everyone throws themselves into it 110 percent, whether they’re being mistaken for sinister pimp doppelgangers or chewing out the director for making them run into lampposts. By the time you’re done cringing at a particularly bad clanger, they’re already well into something else entirely, racing towards the end like they can’t believe they’re getting paid for this, dashing to get it finished before they get rumbled.

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A slapstick kung-fu beatdown ends with them wearing each other’s outfits.

Western fans get a bonus with a subtitle track that runs from the bizarre to the nonsensical, featuring such delights as “I’ll chop you to dead” and the constant refrain of “are you nut?” that amps up the silliness even further. It’s the product of the kind of domestic translation job hardcore fans will probably be all too familiar with, as to my knowledge this film has never had (and is unlikely to ever have) a western release. These movies have had a rougher shake than most after their brief popularity in the ’90s, with many of them almost impossible to find even on import, so it’s no big surprise that this one seems to be entirely out of print. You’ll have to do a little digging to get a hold of this (or get friendly with opportunistic eBay bootleggers), but I’d say it’s worth the effort.

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“Fair treatment”, Big Deal-style.

Fans of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima can add another star to this score, but any HK action fan would be hard pressed not to find this an entertaining bit of occasionally inspired nonsense. You’ll get some bonus laughs if you’re au fait with your gun-toting girls (and we’ll be helping out there with a few retrospectives down the line), but even if it drives you mental it’s all over before you know what the hell happened, and you’ll get a few good fights into the bargain. A mad, mad mess and a whole lot of fun.

 

3 Stars - Watchable

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Review: Danger 5

Feb10
by Jay on February 10, 2013 at 9:47 am
Posted In: reviews

Danger 5

Dario Russo, 2012

A bit of a departure from the usual this time, with a review of a TV series for a change. It’s not something I’m planning on making a habit of on here, but I think this one deserves to be an exception. First of all, it’s one that’s sure to be of interest to exploitation and trash culture fans, and secondly it’s an Australian production that hasn’t really made much of an impact outside its home territory (not helped by it not getting any kind of international release yet). It also doesn’t hurt that it’s a hugely entertaining show with a clear love for its sources.

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Tucker, Claire, Jackson, Ilsa and Pierre.

Set in a very ’60s-inspired version of World War 2, the series follows the exploits of the multinational adventurers of the title. Their mission: to upset Hitler’s endless schemes, eliminate his subordinates and eventually put an end to the mustachioed fellow himself. Each episode focuses on one of those plots in particular, from Rommel’s golden superweapons to Mengele’s Lizard Soldiers of the third Reich, which says most of what you need to know about this show by itself.

This is the follow-up from the same creative team that brought you the internet’s own Italian Spiderman, and if you were a fan of that, then you’re almost certain to love this one. Drawing on everything from Thunderbirds to Kaiju shows (think Ultraman) with a healthy dash of spy action and exploitation thrown in to sweeten the deal, there’s a lot here for genre fans to revel in, not least because it’s clearly a product of some pretty talented fans itself.

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Blingtime for Hitler.

The 5 newcomers do some sterling work capturing their stereotypes, from their period looks through to the accents dubbed (of course) over their performances. The production design is right on the money, supported by some appropriately vivid colour grading and endearingly shonky miniature work that all adds to the appeal. Throw in confident, crash-zooming direction, stop-motion monsters and no small amount of men in rubber suits and you’ve got quite the package.

The only failing that might annoy some is that for a comedy show, the joke rate is on the light side, with little more than a handful of out-and-out gags per episode. On the flipside of that, however, it’s never really content to just throw silly stuff onscreen to chuckle at, knowing when to go for it and provide some straight-up entertainment. When the soundtrack kicks in and the bullets start flying, it’s hard not to get swept along by the relentless fun of it all, in a way that similar attempts like Darkplace never came close to managing (a closer comparison would be the similarly affectionate Black Dynamite). It’s not content to snark on the sidelines when it could be showing you what the creators loved about this stuff to begin with, and it’s all the better for it.

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Mutant Nazis make for ‘saur losers.

Beautifully realised, stylish and charmingly evocative, this is the kind of show that could have been custom-made for people like me. Aside from being a little light on the laughs, this is a highly enjoyable series that makes an asset of its limited budget, the only real shame is that there’s so little of it (six episodes plus a mini webseries that adds up to another one). You could do a lot worse than checking that link to see if it floats your model boat.

 

4 Stars - Excellent

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Review: Piranha 3DD

Feb05
by Jay on February 5, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Posted In: reviews

Piranha 3DD

John Gulager, 2012

Optimism can be a real bear sometimes. After enjoying The Ward, I went trawling on IMDB for anything else of note starring Danielle Panabaker, with the options boiling down to either re-watching the surprisingly good remake of The Crazies (the “that’s where I know her from” film of the day) or giving this direct-to-DVD sequel a try. “Hey, this might be a bit of a laugh. The first one was a riot, if it’s even a fraction as good as that it won’t be a total loss”, I figured.

It’s not a fraction as good. I’m not even sure it knows what “good” is, other than breasts and rubber fish being somehow involved, and even then it fumbles it.

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Exhibit A for the defence.

After laying waste to spring break at Lake Victoria, our snappy pals migrate to the vicinty of Big Wet, a lowest common denominator theme park with a near-lethal addiction to obvious puns. Anticipating the oncoming carnage, designated heroine Maddy (Panabaker) tries to do her best to avert disaster as the water park’s grand re-opening approaches. You can imagine how well that goes.

It’s not the easiest sell to the unconverted, but there’s good trash, great trash and plain old, well, trash. Good trash knows its audience, gives them what they want, and everyone leaves happy, a la Machete or the better Corman films. Great trash transcends itself with such an onslaught of sheer what-the-fuckery it almost becomes its own artform, as seen in Planet Terror, Piranha 3D and of course poster child Crank 2: High Voltage. This is the other kind, just throwing a few shocks and some nudity in and hoping somehow some of it sticks. It’s sub-Troma stuff with a few more fivers in its pocket.

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Great Scott.

Far and away the best scene comes from Ving Rhames as a newly aquaphobic, legless survivor of the Lake Victoria massacre attempting to come to terms with his fear. Elsewhere it’s livened up by a returning cameo from Christopher Lloyd and one of two laughs from the Hoff in an extended joke that outstays its welcome long before the filmmakers are done with it. Even the better parts frequently suffer from lines so bad they feel like placeholders in a first draft. There’s cheesy and then there’s just not even trying.

As far as everything else is concerned, it starts off reasonably well until it quickly becomes apparent how tone-deaf and half-hearted all of it is, with the few designated “shocking moments” coming off badly judged and bizarrely mean-spirited in a film otherwise content to throw rubber fish around while bobbing a few prosthetics in the water. The kind of thing that ends with (SPOILER:) blowing a kid’s head off then having the body bleed out over the closing credits to give the impression you’ve just watched something crazy when it’s really been very weak sauce with a particularly nasty aftertaste.

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Welcome to rock bottom.

Piranha 3DD is not the worst film you’ll ever see. I’m not sure it’s the worst thing I’ve seen this week. That doesn’t let it off the hook as anything other than a terrible waste of time, money and effort from all involved. There’s little worse than a killer fish film that doesn’t know its plaice. Except maybe that last sentence.

 

1 Star - Terrible

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Review: The Cabin in the Woods

Feb04
by Jay on February 4, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Posted In: reviews

The Cabin in the Woods

Drew Goddard, 2012

Yeah, it’s another one that’s been out a while by now, but I couldn’t really resist an opportunity to blather on about one of the most entertaining movies of 2012. We might be in serious danger of this becoming “love-in week” at FFS what with this, the Soska sisters’ American Mary and a retrospective on James Gunn’s Super on the way, but what the hey, I’m sure we won’t have to go too far to stumble across some crushing disappointment (trust me here, I’ve just seen Piranha 3DD).

So let’s get started then, shall we, with Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s ode to messy fun on a desconstructed bun, The Cabin in the Woods.

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Sam Raimi would approve.

You know how this goes – five teens set off for a weekend of fun & frolics at a remote woodland retreat, ignoring any dubious warning signs along the way. A drunken night’s truth or dare ends in them exploring the contents of a sinister cellar, only to unleash something they couldn’t have imagined. Except this time it’s not quite like you’d have imagined either.

Right from the off, you know this isn’t going to be just another stock slasher, with a fantastically irreverent opening scene that sets the off-kilter tone just right. As the title card slams in over irrelevant bickering, it sets the mission statement for the rest of the film – it knows its genre every bit as much as you do, and it’s going to delight in screwing with whatever preconceptions you had coming in.

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You’d be grumpy too if you’d been sitting on a shelf somewhere for the last three years.

It then proceeds to do just that with real wit and panache, thanks to a typically strong script from Whedon and long-time collaborator Goddard, where even meat-and-potatoes work like setting up the characters and getting them to the good stuff fizzes along on the back on sharp gags and snappy dialogue. Performances are dead-on across the board, with a decent scattering of Whedon alumni (including Dollhouse‘s Fran Kranz, Angel‘s Amy Acker and Buffy‘s Tom Lenk) supported by the likes of a pre-fame Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Snow White and the Huntsman) and scene-stealing turns from Let Me In‘s Richard Jenkins and The West Wing‘s Bradley Whitford as two perennially wisecracking observers.

Goddard’s direction (supported by second-unit work from Whedon himself) is right on the money, knowing when to play for laughs and when to pull back to build tension, not forgetting when to just throw caution to the wind and go for it with a properly mental free-for-all. It’s frequently bloody but rarely feels vicious, thanks to a tendency towards overtly “movie” violence over any attempts at realism. It’s not concerned with having you squirm in your seat when you could be jumping or cheering or laughing along at the sheer daft artifice of it all. At a time when most horror leans toward inconsequential fluff or defiantly niche viciousness, it’s great to have something both full-blooded enough for fans to get serious kicks from while fun enough to openly recommend without feeling like you’re getting added to somebody’s internal watchlist. It’s probably the best example yet of a film that’s a joke on the genre itself while somehow maintaining enough internal integrity to still work as a great horror movie.

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The universal reaction to finding out what happened to Firefly.

It seems lately Joss Whedon can do no wrong, and The Cabin in the Woods isn’t one to break that winning streak. Effortlessly switching gears between clever deconstruction and straight-up celebration as it sees fit, it’s a breathless exercise in out-and-out bloody entertainment that delivers on every available front. I loved every minute of it.

 

5 Stars - Essential

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